River Of Tears

Its three miles to the riverThat would carry me away,And two miles to the dusty streetThat I saw you on today.Its four miles to my lonely roomWhere I will hide my face,And about half a mile to the downtown barThat I ran from in disgrace.Lord, how long have I got to keep on running,Seven hours, seven days or seven years? All I know is, since youve been goneI feel like Im drowning in a river,Drowning in a river of tears.Drowning in a river.Feel like Im drowning,Drowning in a river.In three more days, Ill leave this townAnd disappear without a trace.A year from now, maybe settle downWhere no one knows my face.I wish that I could hold youOne more time to ease the pain,But my times run out and I got to go,Got to run away again.Still I catch myself thinking,One day Ill find my way back here.Youll save me from drowning,Drowning in a river,Drowning in a river of tears.Drowning in a river.Feels like Im drowning,Drowning in the river.Lord, how long must this go on? Drowning in a river,Drowning in a river of tears.

The Wild Old Wicked Man

BECAUSE I am mad about womenI am mad about the hills,'Said that wild old wicked manWho travels where God wills.'Not to die on the straw at home.Those hands to close these eyes,That is all I ask, my dear,From the old man in the skies.Daybreak and a candle-end.

'Kind are all your words, my dear,Do not the rest withhold.Who can know the year, my dear,when an old man's blood grows cold? 'I have what no young man can haveBecause he loves too much.Words I have that can pierce the heart,But what can he do but touch?'Daybreak and a candle-end.

Then Said she to that wild old man,His stout stick under his hand,'Love to give or to withholdIs not at my command.I gave it all to an older man:That old man in the skies.Hands that are busy with His beadsCan never close those eyes.'Daybreak and a candle-end.

'Go your ways, O go your ways,I choose another mark,Girls down on the seashoreWho understand the dark;Bawdy talk for the fishermen;A dance for the fisher-lads;When dark hangs upon the waterThey turn down their beds.Daybreak and a candle-end.

'A young man in the dark am I,But a wild old man in the light,That can make a cat laugh, orCan touch by mother witThings hid in their marrow-bonesFrom time long passed away,Hid from all those warty ladsThat by their bodies lay.Dayhreak and a candle-end.

'All men live in suffering,I know as few can know,Whether they take the upper roadOr stay content on the low,Rower bent in his row-boatOr weaver bent at his loom,Horseman erect upon horsebackOr child hid in the womb.Daybreak and a candlc-cnd.

'That some stream of lightningFrom the old man in the skiesCan burn out that sufferingNo right-taught man denies.But a coarse old man am I,I choose the second-best,I forget it all awhileUpon a woman's breast.'Daybreak and a candlc-end.

Locked Inside

I have often marveled at the glory of the sun, When it rises above the trees in full bloom in the summertime-Innocently gazing over the magnitude of its mysteriousness-I could capture each moment within my cupped hands-Each moment that its rays pirouette, casting its shadowsUpon the grass that is nearly laughing as it sparkles, While it reflects in its dew each ray at the dawning of every new day-I am alone every morning when I awaken to welcome The miracle of each new day-I am alone as I hope and wish thatSomeday I can be a part of this gift nature has bestowed upon this world-Being in motion with the gentle breeze that rustlesThe leaves on the oak and maple trees which I can seeFor miles and miles until they reach the mountains on the horizon, Then meeting with the sky-The sky, cobalt blue in its hue and there, not a cloud to be seen-I see the trees, the mountains and the splendor of the sun at daybreak-I can see the dew upon the grass capturing the sunlight, asEach ray reaches out as would a cherub with her arms outstretched-I can feel the gentle summertime breeze lightly touching my armsIn an almost sentimental way-But locked inside the dwelling of my own small world and inside of theTenement of what could be none but delusions-This splendor before me- I can only perceive-And today I believe I can also see a rainbow coloring the horizon outside-Robins, cardinals, wild geese and finches flying about as if they have not a care, If rain were falling, my tears would not be known to any others only because, They are so copious they would hit the ground with the rhythm of the rain as it falls.I believe that there are two worlds that exist- one God created and that is theMagnificence of nature, and the other, being the dark would of my dreams.I have often surmised that there exists a lock that keeps me barred from all that is real-While to this lock, I have yet to find a key to unlock and open-I fantasize that one day I will break free from the inner dwelling of my madness.I would climb a mountain and touch the sun above the horizon if I could.I have painted a mural inside of my mind of the vastness and loveliness of this planet-So many times I have believed I have found that special key thatUnlocks the phantasmal gate that separates me from all that is real, but It is all within a dream and I t has been said that dreams often don’t come true, But there are those alive who don’t even have dreams to wish upon, and therefore-I shall be a wild bird flying above this land, beholding nature’s beauty, untilI reach the sky and even if only in my dreams- I know I have a soul and won’t give up hope-And we all know that souls shall never die…

Suppress

When we are young, we suppress our feelings for they say we’re too young to know. We let love pass us by too many times and in later years we look back tears forming in our eyes for those who got away because we were too young to try.

Each life is filled with heartaches such as these I describe and we’ll regret those mistakes until the day we die. Sometimes we meet an old loveand all those yesterdays once more before us begin to unfold.

Can love blossom a second timelong passed the winters of discontent, long passed the flower of our youth. What happens when love’s feelings again begin to awake, do we suppress them once again or let our feeling flow.

I Wanna Know What Love Is

I gotta take a little timeA little time to think things overI better read between the linesIncase I need it when Im olderOhhhhThis mountain I must climbFeels like the world upon my shouldersThrough the clouds I see love shineIt keeps me warm as life grows colderIn my life theres been heartache and painI dont know if I can face it againCant stop nowIve travelled so far to change this lonely lifeChorusI wanna know what love isI want you to show meI wanna feel what love isI know you can show meIm gonna take a little timeA little time to look around meIve got nowhere left to hideLooks like love has finally found meIn my life theres been heartache and painI dont know if I can face it againCant stop nowIve travelled so far to change this lonely lifeChorus

I am magnificent

Everywhere I go, I keep fightingThunder is striking with speed lightningThey try to put me downEvery time I'm aroundI will not let them remove my crown

For I am magnificentWorth every dollar, worth every centEverything I doI do with a hundred and one percent

I am intelligent, benevolent with talentI am the curious luminous geniusWaiting to explode before I am oldI am the teacher in battle with studentsThey keep ignoring what is evident

They say I have to learnI strongly agreeWe all do, now and then

They say I speak wronglyI disagree stronglyIf only they listen hard without prejudiceThey will see things from another point of viewYes it’s true, it’s nothing new

I am magnificentThey hate it when I display it blatantlyTheir grim faces display such resent in that momentBut my words are intended to have only positive intentI am magnificentI am magnificentI will not compromise my strength

Don't

There was a time long agoBut it seemed like yesterdayWhen all I wanted was youAnd now you make a segwayAs you turn your face awayAnd I know your words aren't trueAnd I don't want your liesAnd I don't think that I'm better than you insideAnd you can take off your disguiseCause I can see the truth that's hiddenBehind your eyes

And all those words that you don't say just mean less and less each dayYou can't make me shed a tearI think about tomorrowAnother day of sorrowBut I don't think that I'll be hereAnd I don't want your liesAnd I don't think that I'm better than you insideAnd you can take off your disguiseCause I can see the truth that's hiddenBehind your eyes

What Difference Does It Make?

All men have secrets and here is mineSo let it be knownWe have been through hell and high tide, I can surely rely on you? And yet you start to recoil, heavy words are so lightly thrownBut still Id leap in front of a flying bullet for youSo, what difference does it make? So, what difference does it make? It makes none but you have goneAnd you must be looking very old tonightThe devil will find work for idle hands to doI stole and I lied, and why? because you asked me to!But now you make feel so ashamed because Ive only got two hands well, Im still fond of youSo, what difference does it make? It makes none but you have gone and your prejudice wont keep you warm tonightThe devil will find work for idle hands to doI stole and I lied, and why? just because you asked me to! but you know the truth about me you wont see me anymore, Im still fond of youSo, no more apologies no more apologies Im too tired Im too sick and tired and Im feeling very sick and ill todayBut Im still fond of you

Dear little Darling

I don't have any kids but someday when i do i would like to say this one for them on there wedding day.

Dear little darling, My sweet little childI woke up this morningWith a thought in my headI love you a lotMy dear sweet childI love you so muchI made a poem, Just for you sweet childI want to see you grow, I want to see you blossom, I want to sing you lullabies, I want to whisper soft words, You make me smileYou make me laughYou also make me cry, I cry because I am happyHappy to see you, Happy to see you growI am filled with joy to see you every dayI am glad you are my child; I know this poem doesn’t rhyme, It doesn’t have toYou are what the poem is about, I watched you grow, I watched you blossom, I sang sweet lullabies, I whispered soft words, And now its time for me to say goodbye; You are my life, my gift from heavenAlthough you are grown upAnd it’s your wedding dayA day of happinessA new chapter in your life, But just remember thisYou will always, be my sweet child.

Lies Of Serpents, A River Of Tears

Your eyes search for me for so long i've wanted to come home held back by lies of serpents and tongues of brothers turning a child into an enemy turning open arms into closed fists i could see the reflection in the tears that made their way down Your face onto the ground i kneel upon they form a river that overtakes me compassion envelops me i forgive and release forgive release forgiven released

The River Inside

I stand here still silent amongst you allYet within a river I hid while I stand tallWithin a deep stormy rapid river whirlsCarrying my emotions my insides hurlsCrashing water made of my inner tearsCarrying my stresses, hurt and fearsThe surrounding rocks slowly in my painAre carved deep ground eroded awayAnd when there’s a sudden influx of pain My inner river tries to keep it hidden in vainThen the storm grows, the river does swellRushing cracking into the air as inside fellReleasing the pressure its water must driftSlowly, it trickles tortured down a vertical cliffWater falling as jewel petals from a magic roseThese glistening inner tears that nobody knows

Feeling The River Flowing Inside Me

I didn't think about whether I was writing poems.I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand

— David Anti

did i have as my goal to understand? no it isn't, it is merely to feel how i feel, and keep a record about it, i write like a river, actuallyi do not know where i am going, i just go with the flow, i close my eyesand feel theflow, and not ask where am i going? for that is not the questionand there will be no answers, nothing specificit is only the flow, and the sound, and the color andthe scent,

i am told, all rivers go to the seait is the truth, and i do not question it.i do not ask any understanding about the sea when i arrive there.

Down By The River Again

Down by the river againlistening for stars to interrupt my solitude like the first little nicks of rain to strike a windowpane, I realize how much I prefer a magnanimous liar to the tale of a man with a stingy truthso much so I'm generous in my sorrow with all things that suffer as I dohowever dangerous and estranged tomorrow might causally seem.

The latest casualty of a dream I had, I sit down on a prophetic skull of an Olmec rock surrounded by broken beer bottles, that remind me of withered waterlilies in the falland the cracked shells of cosmic eggs that took the plunge into the abyss to test fly the flightfeathers of a new universelike a baby sparrow on the edge of a nest in the abyss.

My mindstream mingles with the night creek and we both flow by like avatars of timewondering what oceanic theme we might be the tributaries ofas we watch the willows wash their rootswith their hair, and the stars dip their lures in the waterto catch the silver fish that school on the moonlike a poet and a modest riverthat can't find any room for their emotions stranded on the earth like wingless waterbirds.

Down by the river again, it's easier to share my pain with a restless companion in constant change like the moodring of the moonthan it is the meteoritic flash and bling of the ceremonious cornerstones of life who might give good advice to a buildinglike the Kaaba or the black Taj Mahal, but know nothing about walking on quicksand and water or starswithout sinking like most of the living through the fathomless depths of their seeing.

Or the aboriculture of the orchards of rootless treestasting the fruits of their wanderlust like the sad sweetness of farewell on their tonguesas they pass through the gates of becoming the same way they came yesterday like sad poems falling from the wings of waterbirds.Sacred syllables pearling off their feathers like a windfall of pear-shaped tears in the moonlight.

Down by the river again I can dazzle my sorrowwith the beauty of a fleeting insight into the nature of enlightened fireflies that can light up the whole universein a single flash of compassion for everything in passage that can't last if it doesn't fall out of formation with the pastlike Canada geese on a return journeyto the lakes and rivers that don't hang onto their reflections in the well-thumbed holy booksof family albums any longer than it takes for them to be on their way again and gone, gone, gone, altogether gone beyondthe dark hills that keep their secrets to themselves.

Down by the river again, I can commune with all the burnt bridges of my long firewalksthrough my nebulous heart trying to break into starsso I can find my way home again without consulting a starchart of fireflies where X marks the spot of my biggest mistakes when I knocked on a plague door from the inside and the angel of death answered like a distant memory: Get out. No one lives here anymore. And the pain was almost more than I could bear.

Down by the river again, I can let my dreamsand my nightmares alike flow downstreamlike the blossoms of the moon or the feathers of a my imaginative flight path into an oceanic awareness there are no trees, there are no branchesthere are no seas on the moon or in the abyss and the waterbirds have nowhere to land, nowhere to nest, not even the sprigs of peace they carry in their beaks like divining rodsto anywhere within their starless wingspan.

Down by the river again, it's enough that what I am answers to itself even when the nightbird of my longing comes looking for me like a rootless treeit used to roost in like a voice from the pastthat keeps mistaking me for someoneit's the foolishness of a sacred clown to still hope I am. And what can I know about what I'm becoming except it's the sum of all I've forgotto keep pace with the flowing where the shapeshifters wait at the river's turning for a thought to tilt its wings up in a good-bye remember me if you cansloppy kind of salute or awkward bowfrom all of us whose names have been written on the wind and water in bloodto all those lightwaves and flash floods of the heart standing at attention like a parade square where war's never been declaredand head toward home like an arrow that's lost its sense of directionand falls like an illegal immigrant toward earth.

Down by the river again, where changecomes as effortlessly as the fallen leafof an apostate hymnal of protest songs, caught up inthe currents, the undertow, the vertigo, the delirium, the rapids and vapid swamplands of time, no one claims me, and nothing is mineand there's a silence that screams the birthright of my freedom at the starsand holds up my severed umbilical cord as proof I've escaped my immortal chainsand chosen this transient path, brief as it is, of light and wind, root and rain, the circuitous blossoming of the wild grapevineswandering like dancing drunks all over the placeunderneath the fruits by which we shall know themlike chandeliers of global streetlampsshining like clusters of pearls in the Pleiades.

Down by the river again, contemplating the world like an earthbound frog sitting on a cosmic lily pad, feeling the ghost pains of old wounds summoned to a seance of scars like a retrograde excorcism of all life on Mars, wondering if the surest proof that life on earth first came here from that angry libidinous planet like a seed in the fist of a meteor, is that life on earth has been at war ever since.

Or if it's too much bliss, or a surfeit of sorrows that keeps the bubbles of the multiverse in the rivers I've followed into hyperspace likethe inconceivable tomorrows of the lonely predecessor of my own dragon line that's an affable familar with the same starmap onthe palm of my hand, as it holdslike the triune stigmata of serpent fire and snake-eyesof two black pearls of wisdom and one mystic eclipseof a new moonrise in the crescents of its triadic claws.

Down by the river again, where my wounds attend night school in the lecture halls of my heart and vast significance is explained away with the whisper of a cool breeze, a gust of stars, the flaring of a matchbook of daylilies, goose-bumps on the bare arms of the river, and the wild white iris doesn't disguise itself as a truce when it's really a surrender, the sacred silence of the dusk is animated by a cloud of unknowing gnats that makes me wonder what they're the aura ofif not the rapture of love that surrounds the same galaxy of cosmic insights and earthly emotions my heart has been haunting for lightyearslike the distant lustre of Venus shining like nacreous dawn under the heavy eyelids of the dusty sunsetnodding off like a spectrograph under the weight of the longer wavelengths of the red poppies it's been consulting all day like the green skulls of gypsy fortune-tellers prophesying the death of stars that go supernova like nocturnal nightlilies along the riverways and dirt backroads of the Milky Way like sleepwalkers in a dream lingering over the darkening hills of the Lanark Highlandslike an extended metaphor for life, love, and deaththat's been trying to keep pace with a sunflower that blooms at midnight, without running out of breath.

Down by the river again, where I can drown in the endless baptismal fount of my own myth of origin, without entering a womb like an unclean thingasked to wash off the starmud of my afterbirthlike something dirty on the threshold of a shrine of lifeI'm asked to leave outside and turn my backon all the roads and dead end pilgrimages it took to get here, I refuse to start any new incarnation with an act of betrayal, and I won't sanctify a saint without lifting the curse off an heretical dragon's back at the same time, knowing that for every angel that falls from heaven like rain to put this hell on earth out, a demon rises from pandemonium up the burning ladders of their skeletal remains like watersnakes on the fire-escapes of emergency moonlight, to get a rise out of heaven, and warm things up a bitjust to show it that wildflowers can bloom in fire as welland it doesn't hold a monopoly on bells that have been beaten out of the afterlives of experienced swords that have been through the forgelike hot blood through the heart of a warrior poetwho's gone absent without permission like the rogue star of a conscientious objector for goodfrom nightwatch in the guardhouse at the gates of Eden.